Woody Allen

Woody was born and raised in New York City, the son of Nettie, a bookkeeper at her family's delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg, a jewelry engraver and waiter. His family was Jewish and his grandparents were immigrants who spoke Yiddish and German; both of his parents were born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Woody has a sister, Letty, who was born in 1943. His childhood was not particularly happy: his parents did not get along, and he had a rocky relationship with his stern, temperamental mother. Woody spoke Yiddish during his early years. After attending Hebrew school for eight years, he went to Public School 99 (now The Isaac Asimov School for Science and Literature) and to Midwood High School.  Unlike his comic persona, he was more interested in baseball than school and his strong arms insured he was the first to be picked for a team. He impressed students with his extraordinary talent at card and magic tricks. To raise money he began writing jokes (or "gags") for the agent David O. Alber, who sold them to newspaper columnists.

He began to call himself Woody Allen. He was an extremely talented young comedian and would later joke that when he was young he was often sent to inter-faith summer camps, where he "was savagely beaten by children of all races and creeds." At the age of 17, he legally changed his name to Heywood Allen. He was already earning more than both of his parents combined.

After high school, he attended New York University (NYU), where he studied communication and film. He later briefly attended City College of New York and soon flunked out. Later, he learned via self-study rather than the classroom. He eventually taught at The New School.

After his false starts at NYU and City College, he became a full-time writer for Herb Shriner, earning $75 a week at first. At the age of 19, he started writing scripts for The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, specials for Sid Caesar post-Caesar's Hour, and other television shows. By the time he was working for Caesar, he was making $1500 a week; with Caesar he worked alongside Danny Simon, whom Allen credits for helping him to form his writing style.

In 1961, he started a new career as a stand-up comedian, debuting in a Greenwich Village club called the Duplex. Together with his managers, Woody developed a neurotic, nervous, and intellectual persona for his stand-up routine, a successful move which secured regular gigs for him in nightclubs and on television. He brought significant innovation to the comedy monologue genre and his stand-up comedy is considered highly influential.

Woody also wrote for the popular Candid Camera television show, and appeared in some episodes.

He started writing short stories and cartoon captions for magazines such as The New Yorker; he was particularly inspired by the tradition of four prominent New Yorker's humorists, S. J. Perelman, George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley and Max Shulman, whose material he modernized. Woody is also an accomplished author having published four collections of his short pieces and plays. His early comic fiction was heavily influenced by the zany, pun-ridden humour of S.J. Perelman

Woody's distinctive films, which run the gamut from dramas to screwball sex comedies, have made him a notable American director. He is also distinguished by his rapid rate of production and his very large body of work.  Woody writes and directs his movies and has also acted in the majority of them. For inspiration, he draws heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema, among a wealth of other fields of interest.

Woody developed a passion for music early on and is a celebrated jazz clarinetist. What began as a teenage avocation has led to regular public performances at various small venues in his hometown of Manhattan, with occasional appearances at various jazz festivals. He joined the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the New Orleans Funeral Ragtime Orchestra in performances that provided the film score for his 1973 comedy Sleeper, and performed in a rare European tour in 1996, which became the subject of the documentary Wild Man Blues.

At 75, the subject of eternal destiny is beginning to wriggle at Woody's heart.  In a few excerpts from a biography, Woody states that when he was young, "I was unmoved by the synagogue, I was not interested in the Seder, I was not interested in the Hebrew school, I was not interested in being Jewish," Woody says. "It just didn't mean a thing to me. I was not ashamed of it nor was I proud of it. It was a nonfactor to me. I didn't care about it. It just wasn't my field of interest. I cared about baseball, I cared about movies. To be a Jew was not something that I felt 'Oh, God, I'm so lucky.' Or 'Gee, I wish I were something else.' I certainly had no interest in being Catholic or in any of the other Gentile religions." The notion brings forth a laugh from him when he says it. "I thought those kids in Catholic school who couldn't see movies because the Legion of Decency wouldn't permit them, or who said their catechism, were silly beyond belief. I thought, 'What a waste of time.' And I felt the same thing in Hebrew school, my mind drifting out the window, not learning anything, just counting the minutes until it was over.

"Now, however, he is consumed with questions of eschatology and a merciful God's existence; with questions of morality and justice when God may either not care or be absent from worldly life. Those issues are at the heart of two films made fifteen years apart: Crimes and Misdemeanors, in which a man has his mistress killed when she threatens to expose their affair and his financial manipulations, and, in a farcical way. Love and Death, in which the characters played by Woody and Diane Keaton--Boris and his (like Rita) cousin Sonia--given the opportunity to kill Napoleon, argue like two undergraduate philosophy majors over the moral rectitude of their action or inaction.

"For all his questioning and agonizing. Woody Alien is a reluctant (he hopes there is a God) but pessimistic (he doubts there is) agnostic who wishes he had been born with religious faith (not to be confused with sectarian belief) and who believes that even if God is absent, it is important to lead an honest and responsible life."